The working life of Museum of London

Oh dear. I completely forgot that I had planned to say a few more words about our – alleged – child’s acrobat costume from around 1860. Here’s a quick reminder of what I’m talking about.

We did establish that it is very much in keeping with fashionable aerialist wear of the period. Now that we’ve looked at the shape, let’s examine some of the details. I am fascinated by the spangles with their concentric rings and little notches.

In 1865 the Boston weekly Littell’s Living Age, some sort of Reader’s Digest, re-published a short article that had previously appeared in the Daily Telegraph on the subject of spangles used in harlequin outfits (obviously a hot topic). The writer describes the making of the ‘little flat, circular, shining piece of metal, with a hole in the centre, and a scarcely perceptible slit on one side’.

Apparently, plated copper wire from Germany was drawn out and twisted around a ‘mandrel’ (some sort of cylindrical rod). The resulting tight spiral was cut into rings, which were flattened with a hammer or by machine. Physics is not my strong point, but I guess smashing the ring accounts for the concentric circles which must develop when the metal expands outwards, if you see what I mean (please correct me, if that’s just too idiotic).

I realise that observations on small pieces of flattened metal do not get us very far, but maybe the metal buttons will? They bear two different inscriptions: ‘Adolphus 74 Leadenhall St’ and ‘J.W. Calver Walthamstow’.

It seems that Adolphus, a Tailor and Outfitter in the City of London, went bust in 1880 (The London Gazette, 21/12/1880, page 6897). Entirely different story with James W. Calver: he was listed as a ‘Tailor and Draper’ at 338 Pembroke Road in Walthamstow in 1861, aged only 25. In 1871 he had moved to number 361 (or there had been some number reshuffling) and was still employed in the menswear trade. And profitable this seems to have been as in 1891, aged 55, Mr Calver is living on his own means (of course he might have inherited, married well, won the lottery or at the races …).

The buttons roughly confirm the 1860ish date, although they could of course have been re-used much later. ‘Re-used’ is the important word here as their presence seems to confirm my suspicion that the acrobat suit might have been a fancy dress costume made with the help of the (trouser) buttons of a male suit.

This suspicion is nurtured even more by the silver lace. It is made out of at least two different types of thread, if that’s the right word: a thin strip of metal, probably silver-plated and what is sometimes called filé – an even thinner strip of metal wound around a silk thread core. I only ever have seen this kind of lace on very grand 18th century clothing, including our very own 1853 mantua (or ‘Fanshawe dress‘, as we like to call it).

Somehow this kind of embellishment does not quite seem right for a 19th century aerialist. It seems more likely to have been removed from a piece of clothing that was part of the dressing up box of a respectable family.

Respectable and quite wealthy … I mentioned in my previous entry that the object file did not include much to write home about. Nevertheless it might be worth to talk briefly about the donor. Wouldn’t it be rather marvelous if there was a descendant out there who possessed a photograph of a little boy in a weird outfit that they had always wondered about?

The suit was donated in 1928 by a ‘Mrs John Paterson’. For so many reasons I find the custom of recording women by their husband’s name very annoying, not least as it makes research so much more difficult. However, in this case the name, the address provided in 1928 and the sad fact that the family had lost a son in the First World War meant that I could piece together a very sketchy family history. I might have got the wrong ends of various genealogical sticks but this is where it stands at the moment:

Mrs Paterson was born Freda Rose Woodhouse in December 1866 in Calcutta, India. Her father, Frederik Woodhouse, must have died not long thereafter and in 1871 Freda and her three brothers live with their aunt in Clifton, Bristol. In 1881 they are reunited with her mother Mary Jane in London. On 28 August 1889 the 22-year old Freda married the 13-years older banker, John Paterson, in Kensington. John was born in Inverness in 1853, the son of a ship owner, but seems to have moved to London some time after the 1871 census.

Freda was not even alive when the suit was supposed to have been made and/or worn. Her parents married in 1856, a little too early, and Freda’s eldest brother was probably not born before 1861. Freda’s husband, however, would have been around seven, about the right age, methinks. So what sort of festivity took place in Inverness in 1860ish, which necessitated little John to be dressed up in the über-popular outfit of an aerialist? And why was the costume kept for another 68 years or so?

Will we ever know? I don’t think it matters if we do or don’t. The acrobat suit is a lovely object and even if its precise use will escape us forever, we can be quite safe in assuming that it does reflect the popularity of aerialists in the 1860s. That’s enough for me.

Vauxhall, 1785 by Thomas Rowlandson

Pleasure gardens competed for visitors, vying with each other to offer evermore exciting entertainments. Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens offered a wide variety of entertainment, including lion-tamers, trampoline clowns, fortune tellers, ventriloquists, monkeys, dogs, jugglers, horses who danced to a waltz and fire walkers.

Tournaire's Equestrians, Vauxhall Gardens, 1846

Costumes from the Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

The Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

New Approaches to the Display of Dress
One day conference: Saturday 17 March 2012

In May 2010 we launched the Galleries of Modern London. Two curators, four conservators (some part-time) and many volunteers helped putting the 70 outfits on mannequins which took the best part of two years. Other permanent displays of dress opened or relaunched at a similar time, such as the Gallery of Costume in Manchester and the Fashion & Textile Gallery at The Bowes Museum and temporary dress exhibitions are probably more frequent and popular as ever before.

We thought this would be a good time to bring together speakers from a variety of backgrounds to share their experiences with different types of dress supports. We will look at materials to use and avoid for short-term exhibitions and permanent displays; the different ways of making ‘cut-out’ mannequins including the Body-Thèque – a collection of historic body shapes; how to create character and movement; the reasons behind the use of full-figure mannequins and the advantages and potential issues when working with artists and designers. To put it all into context the day will begin with an exploration of the history of ‘the body in the museum’.

The conference is aimed at curators, conservators, designers and project managers involved in the display of dress. You should come away with a better understanding of how best to tailor your display methods to the ‘look’ you are trying to achieve, your time and your budget. You will also have the opportunity to see more than 60 outfits and 250 accessories displayed in the new Galleries of Modern London.

Click here to download the mannequin conference programme.

Click here to download abstracts and biographies of the speakers.

Fee: £40 / 15 (concessions)

To book, please call 020 7001 9844.

Apologies for taking a while to continue with the Cole Porter song (have a quick look here, if you want to know what this is about). I did not want to start this post with a known unknown but it seems I might have to. Good news first: while waiting for inspiration I read a sentence in a novel published in 1927 that made me sit uncharacteristically upright. These two lines of the second verse suddenly made so much more sense:

Oh, I know it’s hard to waken
But your side-car has been shaken …

I originally thought that ’side-car’ referred to a ‘one-wheeled device attached to the side of a motorcycle’ (thanks, wikipedia) or other similar vehicle, which was waiting to take the awakened daughter to her restaurant. Of course it actually refers to a cocktail ‘invented’ in the early 1920s. The ingredients – Cognac, orange liqueur and lemon juice – do indeed have to be mixed in a shaker and I shall certainly try one at my earliest convenience.

The rest of verse two is pretty self-explanatory so let’s move on to number three:

Wear your parti-pantiecles,
(I love these modern fantasies)
Is that aristoc or kira sheer?
Your effect should be fantastic
In that tu-way stretch elastic
And they’re sure to like your kestos brassière.

There it is, the known unknown: what on earth are parti-pantiecles? Admittedly, there is a tiny chance that I transcribed the word wrongly – the resolution of my photo is too low to be sure. One would think for rhyming reasons it should be pantiecies, and Porter did go for ‘pantasys’ in the US version of the song, but that does not really help.

Aristoc and Kira are of course both brand names for hosiery. Aristoc was registered in 1924 by a Nottinghamshire hosiery company and is still going strong today. Kira was the name used by the silk manufacturers Brough, Nicholson & Hall for their stockings.

‘Tu-way’ stretch fabrics seem to have been a novelty in the early 1930s and were particularly used for underwear. In the 22 August 1934 issue of Vogue a Kestos brassière made of two-way stretch “Lastex” [apostrophes in original] is described as the ideal garment to wear underneath the low-backed dresses so popular during that time. Kestos was apparently the first company to develop a bra with two formed cups. The brand name was derived from the Greek cestus, the magic girdle or belt of Aphrodite that made its wearer irresistible. Originally, Kestos seems to have been a London company but the name was later used by others such as W.H. Symington & Co (Australia), which gained the rights to use the trademark.

Okay, that’s the third verse sorted. Here is the last and longest one again:

Why not try those dolcis shoes,
Not the browns, the wedgwood blues,
And that sexy airplane bustle, just for show,
In your watermelon stiebel,
You’ll make baba beaton feeble,
And I know your mink gills collar
Will make mona simply holler.
Are your ear-clips firmly on?
Dear, you look a little wan,
Why not add a blush-rose measure
And, to give your mother pleasure
Pause a moment and rehearse,
How to swing your tree-bark zipper purse,
And, darling, don’t forget
To attach your new changette.
Wear your eggplant velvet gloves,
(That’s the colour mother loves)
And your moonglow muskrat muff,
Are you sure you’re warm enough?
Where’s your dinner? At the berkeley?
Then you’d better wear your sparkly.
Now you’re forty minutes late, it’s time to go.

The Wedgwood blue Dolcis shoes should not need any explanation (Eleanor blue – after Mrs Roosevelt – Pedemode shoes in the American version). The ’sexy airplane bustle’ almost turned into another parti-pantiecle until I came across a report from the workroom of the French couturier Jean Patou published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 1 March 1934 (page 35):

Here’s Patou’s newest conceit – the airplane bustle, carried out in stiffened diaphanous black net. It gives the wearer that “wind-blow” appearance so essential to the mode just now. Either one must be at the mercy of a headwind or a following wind nowadays. One wonders how the wearer rises above her flounce for sitting down, but of course one must not display a too morbid interest in such problems.

Oh no, one definitely mustn’t!

In the fourth line of this verse we find out why the lyrics were stuck into Victor Stiebel’s press book in the first place: he has produced a dress that will make Cecil Beaton’s sister Baba feeble. Watermelon pink seems to have been a popular colour in the 1930s and was located somewhere between what I would call fuchsia and coral.

I should think that a fur collar made of the throats and necks of minks would make Mona (presumably the Mona Lisa) weep, rather than holler. Fur was super-fashionable in the 1920s and 30s and a moonglow muskrat muff is mentioned later on. Vogue recommended the pelt of the North American muskrat for coats and motor robes in the issue published on 19 September 1934. If you really want to, you can still find quite a few muskrat muffs online.

Just two accessories to go: The use of zips in fashion was still quite a new thing in the early 1930s and, according to some sources, so was the transformation of treebark into fabric. Schiaparelli wrote of her close collaboration with ‘the textile people’ in her autobiography and claimed ‘to have launched a myriad of novelties’ such as ‘tree bark, cellophane, straw, and even glass’ (Shocking Life, V&A edition, page 61). I wonder whether she meant fabric crinkled to look like treebark, which the designer seems to have developed with the Lyon textile manufacturer Colcombet. L’Officiel de la Mode reported in 1935 that Colcombet had presented a ‘rough crepe’ called Écorce d’Olivier, or Olive Tree Bark. In 1938, too late for this song, Schiaparelli made a dress of silk printed to resemble treebark (for some reason I cannot link to an example directly, search for ‘Schiaparelli’ here, and it should come up).

Now to one of my favourite things: the changette. In July 1932 Nina Skidelsky of Stratford Connecticut and Woldemar A. Barry of New York applied for a patent for a brooch-cum-container.

The patent application was refined in 1933 and a new drawing was filed, see above. Skidelsky and Barry explained that

The object of our invention is to combine in a single article of manufacture an attractive decorative device primarily for the purpose of adornment, having a thin metal panel which will partially, and in some cases entirely, conceals a thin, flat receptacle for money or small change, which receptacle can manually open and close quickly but will for the most part be unnoticed by the eye of the uninitiated.

Changettes must be quite rare by now. The example below was recently for sale on ebay.

I cannot quite picture the young lady envisioned by Cole Porter and I am not sure I really want to. Watermelon pink dress, mink gills collar, muskrat fur muff, changette, treebark purse, Wedgwood blue shoes? Whatever she may look like, she is now ready for dinner at the Berkeley Hotel, until the early 1970s situated at the corner of Piccadilly and Berkeley Street, more or less opposite the Ritz. Let’s hope she has a good time.

Baby poutz and parti-pantiecles are still up for grabs. If you can turn these known unknowns into known knowns, please get in touch.

Some weeks ago I spent a few, very pleasant days looking through Victor Stiebel’s press books at the V&A’s Archive of Art & Design. I came across an entire page from an unnamed magazine pasted between two clippings dated February and March 1934.

If the photo was better (apologies, I took my own camera, which is not performing well in low light conditions, or maybe I am not) you could read, next to a drawing by Marcel Vertès, the lyrics of a Cole Porter song. They seem to represent the words of a loving but somewhat exasperated society mother trying to rouse her bright young daughter who needs to spruce herself up for dinner at the Berkeley. The song shows that product placement is nothing new, Porter has sprinkled it with the names of many contemporary beauty aids and clothing brands. Some of the less obvious references stirred the little Inspector Columbo in me that is always waiting to come out (or should this be Hercule Poirot seeing that we are time-travelling to 1934?).

Before I type out the lyrics in full, I would like to ask a favour. If you happen to have issues of the British Harper’s Bazaar at your disposal, please check the early 1934 issues. I have not had time to go to a library to do this myself. For reasons that shall become clearer later, I am pretty sure we are talking Harper’s rather than Vogue (a check of our Vogue copies was inconclusive as we don’t have a complete run for 1934).

Without further ado, here it is:

Dressing Daughter for Dinner

Come, awake, fair daughter,
Here’s the floris toilet water
And the perstick which I bought for you at boots,
Bring along that little jar o’
Velva cream, valaze mascara,
Your new eye-tebs and of course your baby poutz.

My, your lids look bad, oh
Where’s the persian blue eye-shadow
And the ruby cream to add to your success?
Oh, I know it’s hard to waken
But your side-car has been shaken
And it’s time that mother’s pet should start to dress.

Wear your parti-pantiecles,
(I love these modern fantasies)
Is that aristoc or one of kira sheer?
Your effect should be fantastic
In that tu-way stretch elastic
And they’re sure to like your kestos brassière.

Why not try those dolcis shoes,
Not the browns, the wedgwood blues,
And that sexy airplane bustle, just for show.
In your watermelon stiebel
You’ll make baba beaton feeble,
And I know your mink gills collar
Will make mona simply holler.
Are your ear-clips firmly on?
Dear, you look a little wan,
Why not add a blush-rose measure
And, to give your mother pleasure
Pause a moment and rehearse,
How to swing your tree-bark zipper purse,
And, darling, don’t forget
To attach your new changette
Wear your eggplant velvet gloves,
(That the colour mother loves)
And your moonglow muskrat muff,
Are you sure you’re warm enough?
Where’s your dinner? At the berkeley?
Then you’d better wear your sparkly.
Now you’re forty minutes late, it’s time to go.

Lovely non? Apart from anything else I am quite intrigued by the whole lower case thing. Let’s get straight to work on the first paragraph:

Floris toilet water is easy but what about the perstick bought at Boots? The name, sort of, gives it away. It refers to a deodorant in a brand new format, the brainchild of the owner of ‘Feminine Products, Inc, New York’. (Do not get too distracted by the ‘bachelor’ girl with the cigarette, it is the left column you want to focus on!)

Marvin Small’s invention was patented in August 1934. Below is a longer quote from his patent application submitted two years earlier (and the accompanying drawing), which suggests that carrying around ‘toilet accessories’ still had a bit of novelty value.

According to the present invention, the perspiration inhibiting composition in solid form but of a soft wax-like consistency is molded [sic] in the shape of an elongated pencil or stick and is housed in a container which acts as a means for holding the pencil during application of the preparation and also as a means for completely closing the pencil when not in use. It can be carried in a ladies’ hand bag in the same way that lip sticks and other toilet accessories are now carried.

Mr Small seems to have invented a few more things and apparently made enough money to retire aged 45. I presume he was a man who did not mince words as his 1955 self-help book was entitled How to Make More Money.

I wonder whether the editor of Harper’s Bazaar put any restrictions on Cole Porter. Or perhaps he himself decided to mention both Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein products in the fifth line? The to our ears somewhat unfortunately named Velva cream was Arden’s concoction and appears in the 1937 price list in our collection.

We also have an Elizabeth Arden brochure enticingly entitled The Quest of the Beautiful. Here we learn that Velva is not only ‘velvety’ but also ‘nourishing without fattening’ and therefore perfect for the ‘full face’. Valaze was Helena Rubinstein’s invention and the name was used not just for products but also for her beauty ‘institutes’.

Eye-tebs are a brand of false eye lashes but the spelling is slightly mystifying. In New York you could have had your lashes fitted at the Ey-Teb salon on Fifth Avenue.  I do not know whether an ‘e’ was added for the English market (the 1939 advertisement below suggests otherwise), or whether we are talking about a different company.

Baby poutz has so far eluded me. I presume it refers to some lip product but to what exactly? In the American version the product is replaced with Baby Touch, which seems to have been a hair remover (and you thought we invented all this kind of stuff).

American version? I hear you ask. Yep, google books told me that the US edition of Harper’s published alternative lyrics in the same year. So I traipsed to the Barbican library to consult Robert Kimball’s vast compilation of Cole Porters complete lyrics first published in 1983 (you will want page 197). I learned that, sadly, no music survives (if it ever existed) and that Porter and/or Harper’s must have thought that the (female) population of neither nation would ‘get’ the other’s brands. For the American market the first paragraph/verse was altered so that the very English Floris was replaced by Coty, Valaze by Winx and Eye-Tebs by Ne-Tebs (artificial nails). I wonder in which order the songs were commissioned (somehow I think they were a commission): the American first (which I suspect) or the British?

I will continue the product matching quest in my next post when we shall be tackling underwear and novelty jewellery. In the meantime, if you can enlighten me about baby poutz, please get in touch.

There I was researching some of the finer points of the utility clothing scheme, which I was going to share with you eventually, when I became terribly distracted. Looking through some potentially useful images, I came across this one, showing a scarf from our collection:

What distracted me were the three symbols, which had to have something to do with the Free French Forces as the words “Forces Françaises Libres” by Jacqmar are dotted all over the scarf as well as the signature of Charles de Gaulle (I know it looks like Gaully, but this is how the General signed his name).

Let’s re-cap what lead to the establishment of the FFL (not that I am an expert …): On 10 May 1940 German forces began to invade France. Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), a World War I veteran and now a colonel in the French Army, attacked the Germans with some success and was promoted to brigadier general. On 5 June, de Gaulle was appointed Under Secretary of State for National Defence and War and was put in charge of coordination with the UK. On 14 June Paris was occupied by the Germans. Things looked pretty bad but de Gaulle was vehemently against surrender unlike Marshal Pétain (1856-1951), another World War I veteran, who had become prime minister on 16 June. Pétain negotiated an armistice, which came into effect on 25 June. France was divided into a German occupation zone and a nominally independent – but in reality collaborating – state in the south. The latter was called ‘Vichy France’ after the town where its administrative centre was located. Meanwhile de Gaulle had flown to Britain where he his famous Appeal of 18 June was broadcast by the BBC. Condemned to death for treason in his homeland, de Gaulle settled in England from where he organised the Free French Forces.

Phew. Back to the little ‘logo’s. The one that looks a bit like a coffin turned out to show the pocket badge of the FNFL, the Forces Navales Françaises Libres. Below is a replica, which I believe is pretty accurate (I could not find a good picture of a real one).

The two-barred cross, the so-called Cross of Lorraine, was the symbol of the Free French Forces. It was part of the coat-of-arms of the French province of Lorraine, a large part of which had been annexed by Germany between 1871 and 1970, and again from 1940 to 1944. The cross stood for the aim to recover France’s lost land.

The light blue motif was drawn after the breast badge of the Free French Air Force, or Force Aériennes Françaises Libres. The example below is one of the original, numbered badges.

The third symbol was based on the so-called ‘Moustique’ or mosquito, another breast badge but more special than the others. The badge could only be worn by men and women who had joined the Forces Françaises Libres before August 1943, when their units were amalgamated with the French Army of North Africa.

Apparently, de Gaulle sported the Moustique until the end of his life, whenever he was in uniform. Here you can see it on his right breast during a broadcast in 1941.

The company which produced our scarf was founded by Joseph “Jack” Lyons and his wife Mary. The couple felt that J H Lyons did not sound swish enough so they Frenchified a mash-up of their first names and came up with the bizarrely spelled Jacqmar. The company was based in a very elegant house on 16 Grosvenor Street in Mayfair. Originally it produced high-end textiles but later branched out into fashion (we have a number of Victor Stiebel for Jacqmar creations). Jacqmar’s patriotic scarves were first issued in 1941. Below is another one relating to the Free French Forces using the French flag, the Moustique and the ‘coffin’ badge, as well as an image of de Gaulle’s manifesto.

At the time of writing one such scarf is for sale at Rennart whose co-founder Paul Rennie has written a very helpful article about the ‘London Squares’. He described another purpose of these scarves (apart from making the wearer look très chic):

The designs produced by Jacqmar are unashamedly aimed at an economy of exchange between wartime sweethearts in London. The existence of designs aimed at American personnel, the Free French and Poles in London serve as a reminder that, whatever the official line, fraternisation between these different groups was popular.

The textile firm Ascher also produced patriotic scarves, one is on display in our Galleries of Modern London. It was designed by the Polish-born artist Feliks Topolski who had arrived in London in 1935. Topolski’s drawing shows some of the different nationalities that congregated in London during the war including a Polish soldier and sailors from France, Norway, Australia, Czechoslovakia, Holland, America and New Zealand.

In case you are wondering how all of this relates to the intricacies of the utility scheme, well, it doesn’t really, although I will let you know that a large scarf would have cost you 2 coupons.

I leave you with another Jacqmar scarf held at the V&A. It is called London Wall and for so many reasons, not least our address, we would love to have an example. If you happen to have one in your scarf drawer and are feeling generous, please get in touch.

Posters in various lovely colours bear slogans you might have encountered during the war:

Careless talk costs lives (medium blue), Lend to Defend the right to be free (light green), Go to it (pink), Air Raid Shelter (light pink), Give us the tools we will finish the job (fuchsia), We shall not flag or fail we shall go on to the end, Winston Churchill (orange), If you must talk, talk victory (violet), Save for victory (lilac), Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution (blue-green).

I cannot read the little, diagonal ones but apparently there is also an ironic Bill Stickers will be prosecuted.

The colours and arrangement reminded me of the Peckham Peace Wall. Methinks there is another scarf opportunity …

Last weekend I went to an exhibition of works by the Victorian painter Sir John Gilbert (1817-1897) at the Guildhall Art Gallery, which I enjoyed much more than expected. Below is one of the works, a large watercolour showing a scene from Dickens’ Bleak House with the enormously long title: Miss Flyte introduces the Wards in Jarndyce to Krook, the Lord Chancellor.

Compulsively staring at clothing depicted in (even vaguely) figurative art is probably an occupational hazard. You should have seen me in the Conversation Piece exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery. I went there while we were working on the Pleasure Garden display, i.e. at a moment when I was unduly obsessed with cane ribbons and men’s cravats. There was an embarrassment of haberdashery and stocks on show and, sadly, I mainly had eyes for them.

On the whole, I am not so keen on painters imagining historic moments or scenes from literature from earlier periods, partly because I do not trust their depiction of clothing (there are other reasons). Gilbert’s Bleak House watercolour is fine, as he uses contemporary-ish dress (the work was shown in 1860 but I think Gilbert tried to depict the fashions of the time the novel was published, 1852-3). Gilbert’s works based on Shakespeare, however, I am not so interested in, although they are entertaining and quite convincing, clothes-wise. I wonder whether Gilbert used props like the history painters whose collections of ‘dress-up clothes’ now form an important part of the Museum’s holdings (see further reading below)? In any case, there is more than enough for the clothes-obsessed in the exhibition and here are a few things that aroused my curiosity:

1. The wrinkly stockings of the Distinguished Men of Science of Great Britain
Gilbert provided the drawing for this print of no less than 52 (!!!) British scientists, which is set in 1807-8 but was published in 1862.

Gilbert was born in 1817 and I doubt that he would have worn breeches himself.  During his lifetime they were only worn for particular occasions and, I guess, by liveried servants. So why did Gilbert give quite a few of the distinguished men wrinkly stockings? (Is this possibly a very idiotic question?) Sadly I could not find a high-enough-resolution image of the scientists so you have to take me word for it or go and see for yourself (you should do that anyway).

2. William Makepeace Thackeray’s Spectacles
Ever since I searched our collection for spectacles for one of our 19th century gents in the Pleasure Garden, I have been interested in 18th and 19th century portraits of people wearing glasses. Gilbert’s painting of Thackeray is a little less exciting now that I discovered that a good photo of the novelist wearing his specs exists, but the oil also shows his watch chain and how this is attached to the waistcoat. All very good for the obsessive male accessory watcher.

3. Various details in the Bleak House painting …
… particularly the doll, the bonnets and the pattens. I shall point out the latter to my colleague Hilary Davidson who is currently researching these interesting items of footwear.

There are also more specs:

4. The double-page spread about Queen Victoria’s first fancy dress ball
The exhibition contains the first edition, ever, of the Illustrated London News (ILN) from 14 May 1842, which included a report, illustrated of course, of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s Plantagenet Ball. Gilbert had produced the wood engravings and, according to some, went on to supply around 30,000 illustrations to the ILN, which often had to be finished in great haste. How this was all done is explained in the exhibition.

5. Sketches of feminist ladies
Unfortunately I cannot present these to you because I stupidly did not buy the catalogue. If I remember correctly, one sketch showed a group of female watercolourists storming the building of the Watercolour Society holding placards. The other one depicted the smoking room of the Garrick Club, or rather, what it would look like should women ever be allowed in (Gilbert was convinced they would take all the good seats). Both sketches were highly hilarious (in several ways) and also provided a good idea of women’s hairstyles and their bustly silhouettes.

Trying to find images of the sketches online led me to this page on the Royal Academy website (Gilbert was an Academician) where I discovered a few more works of interest to the fashion-minded, two of which below:

And this rather fabulous sketch of a wedding party in Greenwich in 1874 whose members might have consumed an alcoholic beverage or two:

When you are at the Guildhall Art Gallery, make sure you also look at William Logsdail’s large painting of the Lord Mayor’s Procession in 1880. Then you will of course have pop around the corner to us to compare and contrast, not only the actual Lord Mayor’s Coach, but also the postillion’s jacket. And possibly have some cake.

Further reading:
Julia Petrov, ‘”The habit of their age”: English genre painters, dress collecting, and museums, 1910–1914′, Journal of the History of Collections (2008), Volume 20, Issue 2, pages 237-251.

I am aware that I have been woefully neglecting this blog, but I have rather a long list of excuses, some of them pretty good. My most recent distraction, if that’s the right word, was a summer school which we ran over three weeks in July. One of the sessions was about the experiences of women during the two World Wars and I showed the students examples of women’s uniforms including the one you can see below.

The trousers and tunic are made of very heavy, dark blue cotton. There is no embellishment whatsoever apart from the letters ‘GER’ embroidered in red on the collar. GER stands for Great Eastern Railway, the line that linked Liverpool Street Station to Norwich and other towns in East Anglia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

During both wars, transport was one of the main areas where women replaced men. According to one statistic (from the National Archives website), the number of women ‘employed in the transport industry expanded by 555% to roughly 100,000′ between July 1914 and November 1918. (There is more detailed information at the end of this article.)

Female conductors, or ‘conductorettes’, in particular seem to have attracted much attention and were photographed a lot (maybe that’s why this one looks a tad suspicious). I guess they were more visible than, say, women working in a munitions factory. The female conductor’s uniform was more aligned with contemporary fashionable dress than our tunic/trouser combination, which was made for heavier work.

The GER outfit was part of a group of women’s workwear that has been returned to us fairly recently by the Imperial War Museum. The whole lot had been sent to the IWM in 1932 (!!!) to feature in an exhibition about London in Wartime. I wanted to find out more.

I suspect the idea of representing the Great War in a museum was, if not initiated, then possibly reinforced by an article published in The Times on 20 February 1917 (p. 11) in which ‘A Correspondent’ reported on ‘A National War Museum. What Paris Has Done’. The journalist starts by praising the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, which English visitors used to leave bemoaning the lack of an equivalent institution in their home country. Of course that situation had been remedied with the opening of the London Museum in March 1912. However, now Paris, or rather a certain ‘M. and Mme. Henri Leblanc’, had beaten London to it again.

The couple had opened a private museum in some 15 rooms of two ‘first-floor appartements‘ in the 16h arrondissment which was open to the public on Thursday afternoons and the first Sunday of every month. Apparently, the Leblancs’ first objects were acquired on 2 August 1914: ‘a copy of the French Mobilisation Order, a few newspaper broadsheets, and some tiny patriotic emblems that were being sold to the war-fevered populace on the boulevards’. Since then, the couple had amassed around 150,000 ’souvenirs of the war, classified and scientifically arranged’. The Leblancs did not only collect French artifacts but also objects from the other nations involved in the war. Concentrating on 2-D items such as prints, brochures, newspapers, photographs and stamps, they also included medals, ‘flaglets’ and ‘toys bearing on the war: toy guns, leaden soldiers in the uniforms of all the belligerent nations, model cannons and ambulances, aeroplanes and submarines’. They had even found room in their picture gallery to install cases for ‘groups of beautifully modelled wax figurines dressed in costumes of the period’.

Like modern museum curators, Louise and Henri Leblanc realised the importance of establishing an emotional connection with the visitors to their museum and they had installed what was ‘colloquially known as the “Chamber of Horrors”‘: ‘portraits of the notorious Germans of the day, flanked by their brutal posters and with samples of their savagery’. The article ends with the writer expressing his (or her) fervent hope ‘to arouse in some hearts at home the patriotic desire to go and do’ as the Leblancs were doing. (By the way, their collection is still preserved in the Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine in Nanterre and a museum in Paris.)

It may have been coincidence, but only two days later, on 22 February 1917, The Times (p. 3) published the following notice:

A Collection of War Relics
While steps are being taken at the London Museum to establish a permanent collection of local war relics, it is not at present the intention of the authorities to open the exhibition until after the war.
Many London war posters, photographs of Zeppelin raids, originals of drawings that have appeared in the illustrated papers and unpublished photographs, a bomb, and other relics relating to the metropolis, have already been got together, and these are being added to frequently. The articles, which are being carefully stored, will eventually be shown to the public in a room in the museum at Lancaster House, which is closed for the duration of war.

Apparently Guy Francis Laking, the first Keeper of the London Museum, had sought permission to photograph the damage done during zeppelin air raids already in 1915 (Francis Sheppard, The Treasury of London’s Past, p. 87). Two weeks after the above notice had appeared in the newspaper, on 25 April 1917, Laking sent letters to several railway companies stating that he was

forming at the London Museum a War Gallery of exhibits relating to the present War, appertaining to London, and I am anxious to make this representative as possible. If you could see your way to spare me a costume of your female workers, such as -
Guard,
Ticket-Collector, etc.
my Trustees would be extremely grateful as these would form important additions.

Laking did not only approach railway companies, but also The Mayfair Window Cleaning Company, which sent ‘a set of uniform [sic], tools and pails in use by our Women Window Cleaners’ as well as  a ‘ladder, which is being made, similar to those used by the women’. J. Lyons & Co. provided ‘a costume similar to those worn by our Women Drivers’ and the GPO (General Post Office) dispatched the uniform of a female messenger, the cycle/motorbike couriers of their day whose job it was to deliver telegrams.

In the meantime, on 25 March 1917, it was announced that ’sanction has been given by the War Cabinet to the scheme put forward by Sir A. Mond, M.P., the First Commissioner of Works, of establishing a National War Museum’ (The Times, p. 5). The aim was ‘to collect and preserve for public inspection objects illustrating the British share in the war’, including ‘arms and other war materials’, ‘trophies captured from the enemy’ and ’souvenirs found on battlefields’, as well as the literature, art and music of war. The long list of desirable artifacts does not seem to contain uniforms although some must have made their way into the collection.

On 9 October 1918, more than a month before the armistice came into effect on 11 November, an exhibition advertised as ‘a complete survey of women’s work’, organised by the Women’s Section of the by then renamed Imperial War Museum was opened at the Whitechapel Gallery.

From the very favourable review published in The Times the previous day we know that the ground floor was ‘divided into bays, each with models or lay figures to illustrate the work outlined by photographs and exhibits’ (‘Women’s War Museum. Records and Models.’, p. 11). The Home Office bay was singled out for particular praise. It contained ‘lay figures lent by artists [...] fitted out by Miss Anderson, the chief lady factory inspector, in the protective clothing worn in different trades’.

It was noted that samples of work ‘not formerly done by women’ were included, such as ‘a fine model of women lacing an airship’ and – there she is again – ‘a life-like model of a tram conductress in uniform, with a shining ticket punch’. On the upper floor visitors could inspect lay figures of land girls complete with ‘a cow which it took 10 soldiers to carry in’. On the date of the journalist’s visit, Lady Askwith and ‘her Y.M.C.A. helpers’ were serving in the canteen. Suspecting that ‘most exhibitions failed because there were no refreshment bars’, the forward thinking Lady Askwith had taken measures. Readers were assured that Mrs Winston Churchill was lined up to take charge of the canteen the following day.

Meanwhile, over at Lancaster House, the staff of the London Museum was preparing for its re-opening on 22 October (the museum had been closed since February 1916). According to the review in The Times, the three rooms on the top floor devoted to ‘every phase of the Great War’ contained ‘the most “actual” of all the special groups of exhibits’, including ‘costumes of men and women who took their part in war work, at home and abroad’ (21 October 1919, p. 16). Laking seems to have prepared this display already in 1917 as he had sent a group of ‘costumes’ to the sculptor Felix Joubert (who I really want to know more about) in May that year (did Laking fill in an Exit form, I wonder?). It seems Joubert was supposed to prepare figures for six women’s uniforms including – surprise, surprise – two conductorettes, as well as a ‘Fireman’s Costume’.

With the help of an increasing number of colleagues, I am currently trying to find out whether we have any photographs or illustrations of the war display. I do not know when it was taken down but all the women’s uniforms displayed at Lancaster House in 1919 were sent on to the Imperial War Museum in 1932. Unsurprisingly, its new exhibition was also reviewed in The Times but no displays relating to women’s war work are mentioned (‘London in Wartime’, 26 July 1932, p. 17).

At this point the War Museum was housed in the Imperial Institute in South Kensington (now demolished) in very cramped circumstances. Nevertheless it was extremely popular. The Times reported on 25 August 1933 (p. 13) that on Whit-Monday (16 May) the previous year a staggering 15,851 visitors had attended, ‘a number greatly in excess of the figures returned by all the large museums of London, except the Science Museum’. The galleries were overcrowded ‘to the point of acute discomfort, and it was fortunate that there were no untoward incidents’.

In November 1932, Lord Conway of Allington, the first Director-General of the War Museum, brought this dire situation to the attention to the House of Lords. Assuming that ‘a good many’ of their Lordships neither knew the location of the museum nor had visited it, he described its holdings in great detail. These included a ‘large number of beautiful little models of women at work’ representing ‘all kinds of women’s work … many of them of a very fine beautiful character, and all produced by sculptors of repute’. He also mentioned cryptically that ‘women’s work is represented in a number of other ways which I will not detail but you can easily imagine’ (HL Deb 30 November 1932, vol 86, cc 151-68).

My initial enthusiasm for the GER uniform was partly sparked by my ongoing quest to find the ideal workwear for the (female) dress curator. Having read the contemporary accounts, this now seems rather frivolous. I was struck by the foresight of Guy Laking who realised the important part clothes could play in bringing to life the experience of Londoners during the Great War (sadly he died only one month after the Museum’s re-opening, on 22 November 1919); by how early it was recognised that the war should be remembered in a museum; by the popularity of the War Museum (although that should not have come as a surprise) and by the early acknowledgment of women’s contribution.

But what about the GER uniform? The object file holds a letter dated 17 May 1917, sent from the Chief Traffic Manager’s Office of the Great Eastern Railway based at Liverpool Street, which reads:

Dear Sir,
Referring to your letter of 24th. ultimo, addressed to the Secretary, I am sending you herewith specimens of the Women’s uniform as issued to our Ticket Takers, Porters (Parcels, Platform and Goods), and Engine and Carriage Cleaners.
As soon a the exhibition is open, I should like an opportunity of paying it a visit.

Our tunic/trouser combo is the one for the cleaners. Like me, you will be wondering whether the shirt would have been worn over the trousers and if so, whether a belt was used. There are may wonderful photos of railway women online. I particularly like these female engine cleaners in Stafford; this proud looking carriage cleaner and – my favourite – this Underground station painter. None of their outfits is exactly like the GER’s but thankfully there is a film on the Pathé website, which shows a group of female carriage and engine cleaners at work wearing ‘our’ uniform. It seems that the tunic was generally worn loose over the trousers but one women, who can be seen towards the end of the film, has put on a belt. As always, people will find a way to make a prescribed set of clothes somehow their own.

With thanks to David, Sarah and Jenna.

Earlier this year we had the good fortune to employ the services of five student detectives from University College London. The were presented with three potential objects for investigation: a Mitzi Lorenz hat from the 1950s, a ‘lady’s shirt’ made at Bourne & Hollingsworth in the early 20th century and a rather lovely pair of shoes. It was a bit of an unfair contest and you will not get any points for guessing which object(s) won.

Two of the students, Bruce and Charlotte, have agreed to share some of their findings, so what follows are their words (thanks also to Becky, Felicity and Helen):

As part of the Collections Curatorship module, five MA Museum Studies students from UCL were given a selection of dress objects to research. We chose a pair of dancing shoes belonging to a Miss Kitty Lord, dating from around 1900. This is a little snippet of what we found out.

Before this project Kitty Lord was something of a mystery. The curators knew that she had been a performer in music halls and there were more of her stage costumes, as well as photographs, in the collection. From the correspondence with a former friend of Kitty’s they also knew that she had been married three times, once apparently to an Australian sheep farmer. But who was Kitty Lord? And what was it like to perform in music halls in her time?

We started with the shoes, which are made from silk with a grosgrain lining. The high quality materials including intricate embroidery suggest that Kitty was well-paid. According to the label printed inside the shoes they were ‘Made in Vienna for J. Jacobus’. We were able to find out that this company had a store on Shaftesbury Avenue, in the heart of the West End theatre district, from around 1888. It is not surprising that it supplied performers but Jacobus’ high quality shoes were also worn by royalty: Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother wore a pair for the Coronation of her husband King George VI in 1937.

Sadly, hours spent trawling the internet and Government Records Office registers produced very little new biographical information on this enigmatic performer. A birth certificate, and a marriage certificate from the last of her three nuptials were found, but nothing more. [In case any of you can help with further information, it seems that Kitty's maiden name was Kate Anna Emma Burbidge and that she married a certain Cyril Parker, bank clerk in 1915. The profession of Kate/Kitty is not listed on the marriage certificate but her very swish address near Regent's Park: 3 Colosseum Street. BB]

Luckily our investigation of Miss Lord’s professional life proved to be more fruitful. She began her career at the age of eleven performing in pantomime at the Grand in Islington and went on to work in Music Halls throughout Britain. It should be remembered that by Kitty Lord’s day the British Music Hall had become big business with lucrative national chains and a highly professional work force. Whilst not entirely sanitised, halls of the late 19th century were a far cry from the bawdy pot-houses of the mid-Victorian era. .

Whilst the origin of Kitty Lord’s professional life are in the British Music Hall and Variety Theatre, later playbills indicate that her career took a positively international turn. We know of engagements in South America in 1905 and 1906, in Paris – where she performed at the Moulin Rouge in 1907 and shared a stage with Maurice Chevalier at the Ambassadeurs Theatre in 1910 – and the Salone Margerita in Naples in 1910.

It was Kitty’s performance in South America that led to her involvement in a court case, reported in detail in The Stage in January 1910. She was called on as a witness defending the reputation of a pair of London agents and the Buenos Aires Casino, a venue with which the two were connected. The complainant, finding the Casino to be entirely lacking in respectability, had returned to England in breach of her contract. In the short time she had been in Argentina she had seen performances with ‘movements and gestures [that] would not be done in London’, was persuaded to perform in a similar manner, and was even forcibly embraced by a man who had been ‘a perfect nuisance’ to her. Other performers similarly attested to the dubious reputation of this ‘very wicked place’. Kitty Lord, however, was somewhat less outraged by her experience, having performed there, albeit several years earlier, without complaint.

Described variously in playbills as an ‘eccentric dancer’, ‘eccentric singer’ and ‘burlesque actress’, Kitty Lord’s performance repertoire seems to have been broad, and probably boisterous or comic in tone [a 'tickling stick' formed part of her stage wardrobe, BB]. This seems entirely in keeping with the impression we developed of Kitty Lord’s personality. Thrice married international performer and friend of the stars, her style was described as eccentric and her life story was very far from ordinary.

This entry was supposed to be about Cecil Beaton following my perusal of The Strenuous Years, his diaries covering the years 1948-55 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1973). Having bought the book merely to check a quote, I thought I might as well read the whole thing. Unsurprisingly I loved it and was particularly struck by Beaton’s descriptions of his contemporaries. As a photographer, and maybe even more as a draughtsman and aspiring painter, Beaton had to have a good eye. However, capturing the essence of a person’s appearance in a photograph or a sketch is quite different from using words to conjure up a picture.

Maybe because I read the diaries around the time of the royal wedding I found one section particularly interesting. It deals with the Queen’s first Opening of Parliament on 4 November 1952 (King George VI had died on 6 February that year). Beaton loved the theatre and also enjoyed this particular ’show’. He found it greatly enhanced by the use of the kind of dress that invests even the oldest and most spindly-legged aristocrat with grandeur:

I always enjoy watching my fellow human beings; but now, in their traditional fancy dress – a fancy dress that has been tried, developed and improved until found to be flawless – the show could have gone on for ever. Ancient men with tired eyes, wrinkles, thinning hair, and all the sad outwards aspects of age, appeared perfectly cast as unique and remarkable characters, in these marvellous scarlet, black and white clothes. Grand soldiers or officers of state were stiffly encumbered with gold thread embroideries as if they were in their natural everyday habit. (p. 117)

Beaton thought the women present on this occasion lacked ‘hauteur’ and was particularly scathing about ‘those who by some devious means had trapped a man into a marriage’, focusing on one particular ‘tiresome, pushing little Lady … with her innate vulgarity of yellow, frizzy, musical comedy curls’ (pp. 117-8). Fashion forwardness does not really work for grand state occasions and Beaton applauded the approach taken by Helen Percy, Duchess of Northumberland (1886-1965):

The Mistress of the Robes, the Duchess of Northumberland, gigantically tall with wonderful jewels, wore a Knightsbridge horror of a dress, a crinoline of coarse, Parma violet nylon-tulle with self-same sausages, that was so daring in its bad taste that the effect was wonderful. (p. 120)

Wondering how soon after an event Beaton made notes and whether his diary entries were edited, I reread Hugo Vickers introduction to The Unexpurgated Beaton Diaries (Phoenix 2003). Vickers explains that after important occasions Beaton ‘would turn to the diary at once to record every minute detail’ (p. 9). Before publication Beaton ‘retouched’ his diaries ’shamelessly until he achieved the effect he sought’. In the original Beaton might have been ‘venomous’ about contemporaries who then, in the published version, ‘are hailed as wonders and triumphs’ (p. 11). Vickers gives a hilarious example of this method relating to Marlene Dietrich, which I leave you to discover for yourself. For whatever reason, maybe because royalty features heavily, no uncensored version of the diaries before 1965 have been published (I think), so the passages quoted here might have sounded quite different originally.

I enjoyed one description more than all the others. Not only could I easily and vividly imagine the person described, I also liked the sound of her. Beaton started reminiscing when he saw a funeral notice in The Times:

Lady Cecil Bingham, as she used to be known, was an American who married twice, and whose visual parakeet features, and wistful, pale blue eyes, stared out from the pages of weekly magazines under a large Leghorn shepherdess plate loaded with full-budded roses. [...]
As the years advanced, the earlier prettiness gave way to a ‘woman of the world’ smartness, and her gown was of draped, twisted gold brocade, and her waved hair dressed high, wide and handsome. When I was old enough to savour the outer periphery of grown-up society, Lady Bingham was past middle age. Her complexion was of the most dazzling pearly whiteness; but the hair, once a gold Edwardian brioche, had become shingled and fluffy, the nose more parroty, the cheeks rouged in an exaggerated lobster-pink that we seldom see, and the scarlet fingernails created an appearance that verged on wit. She wore tubular shifts of jewel-encrusted, pale-gold lamé, with always a wisp of tulle or chiffon to bind her to an earlier period. She managed to combine the flamboyancy of the Edwardian age with the chic of the ‘twenties. There was something wonderfully rich and pampered about her appearance: she seemed to make winter velvet more darkly sumptuous and face powder more feminine and alluring. Her bird-like impression was reinforced by feathers that she always wore: the paradise plume waving from her head, or the large ostrich-feather fan she carried as she danced. Her small feet and ankles were extraordinarily brittle. [pp. 186-7]

I love this passage. It almost makes me want to be old so I, too, can paint my cheeks in an exaggerated colour (I think I’d go for fuchsia) and see what I can bring to ‘winter velvet’.

Beaton was less kind to Lady Bingham’s sister, ‘Grace Lady Newborough, a handsome Boadicea with a blunt, wooden profile who, in her vast Gainsborough hat, her bust so proudly offered to the waves, was the prize-winning bore wherever she sailed.’ In her case, we can check Beaton’s assertions, at least the one about her looks. The photograph below shows our warrior queen at Ascot around 1909/10.

Here is another, entirely gratuitous, photo* of Lady Newborough from 1928:

What has this to do with the Museum of London, I hear you ask. Beaton remembered that

before it was practice for ladies to become shopkeepers, Lady Bingham had a hat shop in North Audley Street which she named after Marie Antoinette’s milliner, Rose Bertin. Perhaps Lady Bingham’s hats did not prove a financial success; but they gave her the opportunity to appear in different headgear three or four times a day, and her business did not prevent her from making weekend visits. (p. 187)

Luckily we happen to have Rose Bertin hats in the collection, perhaps not the most exciting hats you have ever seen, but lovely nevertheless. Here is the first one, a summer cloche from the mid 1920s:

The two ladies, Newborough and Bingham, were born Grace and Alice Louise Carr in Louisville, Kentucky. I have not found their birth dates, but I presume Alice first saw the light of day in the mid to late 1870s as she married her first husband Samuel Sloan Chauncey in 1894. He worked at, or was one of, Chauncey Brothers & Co, stockbrokers in New York City. The firm must have been pretty successful. When her husband died in 1899 at the young age of 39, Alice Chauncey inherited either one or one and a half million dollars, depending on which report in The New York Times you want to believe.

Alice Louise was said to be the ‘most beautiful widow in the world’ (The New York Times, 21/09/1908). She reportedly left a lasting impression on Lord Kitchener when they met in India on the occasion of the Delhi Durbar in 1903. The General ‘wrote long and interesting letters to the beautiful widow’ (Poverty Bay Herald, 10/11/1906), which were, however, not interesting enough as in 1908 Mrs Chauncey was rumoured to have wed Prince Miguel of Braganza (1878-1923), eldest son of the Miguelist pretender to the throne of Portugal (this is too complicated to go in here). The rumour was untrue and Prince Miguel married another American heiress the following year.

Alice, or Alys as she now styled herself, finally tied the knot a second time on Saturday 4 February 1911. Her wedding to Brig. Gen. the Hon. Cecil Bingham (1861-1934) apparently ’surprised London’ and The New York Times revealed that ‘even the closest friends of the couple were not informed that the wedding would take place till Friday night’ (6/2/1911). The newspaper also reported that Mrs Chauncey had ‘been prominent in London society for a number of years’ and had previously been linked to Lord Roseberry (presumably Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Roseberry 1847-1929), as well as his son Lord Dalmeny (Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Roseberry 1882-1974).

I do not know the reasons behind Lady Bingham’s entrance into the world of commerce but I would like to think that a life of leisure was not for her and/or she could not find the kind of hats she liked in London. In any case, on 3 February 1920 The New York Times announced: ‘Lady Bingham A Milliner. American Wife of British General to Open Establishment.’ On 3 June 1921 an advertisement in The Times (you can see it at the top of this post) promoted ‘Hats for Ascot’. Beaton was not entirely right: the shop was not in South Audley Street but was located not far away, at 24 Davies Street. There ‘original designs at reasonable prices’ were sold as well as ‘model hats’ by the New York milliner Georgette and the Parisian milliners Maria-Guy and Caroline Reboux.

By the time the next advertisement appeared in The Times ten years later (24/6/1930), the company seemed to have gone into clothing. During a month-long sale ladies could expect ‘genuine bargains’ such as half price ‘Crepe de Chine dresses, French hand made Lingerie, Coats, Day and Evening Dresses, Sports Dresses. Tweed and Afternoon Coats.’ The type of clientele that would shop at Bertin would also have appreciated that ‘Orders for Country Dresses and Tweeds for Scotland’ would be ‘taken at reduced price during Sale.’

In a 1929 directory we have in the library, two establishments are listed under ‘Bertin Rose Ltd’: the millinery shop at no. 24 and a dressmakers at no. 20 Davies Street. Sadly we do not have any Rose Bertin gowns but we have the descriptions of two dresses worn at a presentation at court in 1931: Lady Marguerite Bligh opted for ‘a gown of ivory and silver lace and net over flesh pink crêpe de Chine’ with a silver train. Mrs. Darrell must have spent a few guineas on her ‘draped gown of pink satin, the bodice finished with a bow’, or rather on its train of the same material ‘trimmed with sable fur’ (The Times, 4/6/1931).

The millinery business was still going strong in 1943 when the cover of the April 24 issue of Picture Post featured a ‘cherry-laden toque … built up from a greengrocer’s punnet lined with ribbon.’ This was apparently ‘one of the exotic hats designed for Easter by milliner Rose Bertin.’

We do not have anything that ‘exotic’, but here is the second of our Rose Bertin hats, a winter cloche (sorry, bad photo):

Both hats were given to the Museum after the death of their previous owner, Lady Charles Montagu (1869-1942), a cousin of Lady Bingham’s husband, I believe. (If you want to see further Bertin creations go to Getty Images and search for ‘Rose Bertin’. This is not for the faint-hearted, beware of the bird!)

I do not know how much and how long Lady Bingham was actively involved in the running of her shop or shops. Rose Bertin & Company Limited was only dissolved in 1964 (The London Gazette, 27/11/1964). The funeral notice that had set off Beaton’s reminiscences had already been published in The Times eleven years earlier, on 5 November 1953.

I would love to have ended this blog with a portrait of our lady milliner. A photo published on the Library of Congress website supposedly shows a Miss Alice Carr, but there is something odd about it. By 1918, the supposed date of the photo, our heroine was in her second marriage, so was neither a Miss nor still called by her maiden name. Secondly, if it is really her, I want to know what face cream she used, as the person in the tiny photo looks much younger than the 40 years or so Lady Bingham must have been in 1918. But there is some resemblance of the sitter to Lady Newborough and I presume Alice/Alys was not called the worlds most beautiful widow for nothing. Have a look here, if you want to judge for yourself.

* Herald Post Collection, 1984.18, Special Collections, University of Louisville, Kentucky